While the US plays cowboy with Iraq, going in guns blazing all hell-bent-for-leather, someone within the country has a head cool enough for thinking: A muslim woman.
Read: US out, UN in. It makes more sense than Washington.
(Sing along, you know the tune…)
Happy Day,
Chasing the Lies away.
On my way to where the Prez got beat –
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Downing Street?
John Kerry chickened out of his promise to bring the Downing Street Memo to light in congress. John Conyers – what a trooper – took the torch and went to the White House gate and found them locked. Imagine: the White house closed against a Government official being unwelcome in the White House! It’s not like this is a private residence!
Undeterred, Representative Conyers held a news conference to speak of the issue. In his own words, this it how the Republicans tried to counter his move:
Despite desperate attempts by Republicans to disrupt the proceedings, 32 Members of Congress attended this hearing. We were forced to use a cramped room in the basement of the Capitol little bigger than a closet, even though plenty of larger hearing rooms were available. The Republican Leadership also scheduled votes for nearly two straight hours in an unprecedented attempt to limit the ability of Democratic Members of Congress to participate in this hearing.
Thanks to your help, and the more than 560,000 individuals who signed this letter, the mainstream media felt compelled to cover this event. The room was packed with television cameras and there was significant coverage in national newspapers and radio networks. After the hearing I hand delivered the list of signatures along with a letter to the president signed by 122 Members of Congress demanding answers, and led a rally outside the White House.
This makes me curious; why the devious tactics if this memo, as the right would have us believe, is no big deal? It seems their actions belie their words.
What the Republican Party knows is now being revealed: George W. Bush has been dreaming of finishing his father’s war for years.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said, ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He went on, ‘If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.’”
Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military “win” under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush’s father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.
Herskowitz’s revelations illuminate Bush’s personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.
I’d like to take this chance to coin a phrase: “Cowboy Envy” to underscore how childish and irresponsible this type of thinking is. To imperil American soldiery for a childish, middle-school dream of being a successful president is unfitting for an elected official. This is like growing up dreaming of having three banks, because daddy has only one; It’s like a child wanting to push the Big Red Button at an ICBM silo farm – absolutely no thought to consequences.
Like a Crawford cowboy
Riding out on a tank in a bomb-splattered desert town
Like a Crawford cowboy
Sending regret letters to people I have let down
And I just look sad and frown…
(Fess up. You know this one, too.)
Some transliterated quotes from today’s news, just for fun.
Condoleeza “the Dominatrix” Rice: “I would never claim that the exact nature of this insurgency was understood at the time that we went to war.”
What this means: “When we went to war, we had no idea what would happen. We figured, hell, if we blow it big, the next president could just clean up our mess while we lounge in Aruba off the proceeds of our defense contractor stock dividends.”
Dick “the Dick” Cheney: “Any suggestion that we did not exhaust all alternatives before we got to that point, I think, is inaccurate.”
What this means: “I think it’s inaccurate, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy huddling with the big energy companies playing Pokemon with stock options. I exhausted all alternative there, you bet!”
Tony “the Poodle” Blair: “No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at all,”
What this means: “ We had no facts. When there are no facts, no facts can be fixed. Next!”
George “Warmonger” Bush was not available for comment. He spent most of the day mountain biking on the deck of the USS Cowpens, shouting “Mission Accomplished!” He thought he was going to a cow pasture.
What this means: He’s an idiot.
I found the following inflammatory paragraph in this article. Just for kicks I substituted just two words via Edit > Replace.
But for the anti-gay-marriage activists, homosexuality is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-gay-marriage cause who said in essence: ”I have nothing against homosexuality. I just don’t believe gays should be allowed to marry.” Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.
Pretty heavy stuff, wrought with emotion and politically weighty, but not anything we don’t take for granted. The Anti-Gay bias is rampant and all-too-common. In the world of genteel, $50 dinners-on-the-town, polo shirts and Dockers, such blatant hatred and intolerance is politically correct, dinner table conversation. The same demographic wouldn’t dare speak out loud about blacks the same way, but gay bashing is fair game.
Now let’s take the same sentences and change the subject:
But for the anti-Christian-marriage activists, Christianity is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-Christian-marriage cause who said in essence: ”I have nothing against Christianity. I just don’t believe Christians should be allowed to marry.” Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that Christianity is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see Christianity itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.
Would this be printed in the NY Times? Hell, no! (Pun intended) Millions of angry Americans would blast the paper with hate mail, email bombs and would flame message boards with anti-Times effluvium: And rightfully so.
But what’s the difference, really? The paragraphs are essentially the same; only two words were changed. The underlying theme of hatred remains the same, the intolerance is left intact, the carefully selected verbiage of the original report is unchanged. By substituting the subject from one accepted viewpoint, to another, unsanctioned view changed the whole meaning.
My point? Hatred is dangerous no matter the context. Intolerance has no place in our hyper-connected world, in our shrinking globe of over-crowded humanity. As my wife tells the school children she works with, “Don’t say anything to others you wouldn’t want said about yourself or about your mother.” Good advise, no?
People are outwardly different, true, and sometimes the differences make us uneasy, but we have no more space on this tiny world to exercise hatred of others; our world is just too small. The luxury of intolerance is anachronistic and should be abandoned as the ancient philosophy it is. Despite our outward differences of culture, skin-tone, language or beliefs, we are all human beings. That makes us the same. To insist otherwise is to ignore reality, to be narrow-minded and intentionally ignorant of inescapable fact.
All people want happiness. All people need to love and to be loved. We all feel pain, fear, and loneliness. The entirety of humanity feels a common set of emotions, experiences and motivations. Even our quest for spirituality, however varied its outward expression, is rooted in the same emotions, the same needs. Inwardly, all humans are the same. To ignore these truths is to ignore our common heritage, our commonality of purpose, which is to make a paradise of peace out of this world.
To draw imaginary lines of race, ideology or culture around people is to give in to fear. To demonize alternate religious expression is to restrict the fulfillment of human capabilities. To become stagnant, closed and insular is not a healthy lifestyle regardless of scale; it is as bad for individuals as it is for societies. Yet such tendencies are in vogue in the New America of the Religious-Conservative Agenda.
This is not about gays, Christians, or conservatives; this is about the future of Earth. As an emerging global society, we have expressed ourselves in ways that are destructive to our future. As a progressively integrated society, our evolution of the tools of warfare far exceeds the development of the tools of peace; our predilection for conflict far outstrips our preference for solidarity. In light of this, it’s easy to see where we are leading ourselves in our collective blindness of fear, hatred and hostility. Will we survive ourselves? Not unless we change our conventions, beginning with seemingly small things like intolerance.
Senator Richard Durbin (D- Illinois) is taking a lot of heat today. Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff doesn’t like the allegations that the Senator invoked other regimes with poor records for human rights. Paul says Senator Durbin is “foaming at the mouth.” Paul shows selective amnesia by forgetting that the Rebublican base has been using these tactics for years: just one word – “Feminazi.”
Michelle Malkin used her phrase “unhinged” (patent pending) to express, as she like to do, concern over sentiments that don’t fit her rigid, nearsighted views. She is appalled that the Senator doesn’t apologize, calling him treacherous (gasp!). She hasn’t yet called him a moonbat, but she will. I’m sure she’s thanking God we never repealed that lynching bill.
So, what’s the fuss? Dick Durbin - like him or hate him - is calling things as he sees them. To take a stand against the entrenched warbloggers, to walk into a room full of political assassins, to dare to say anything counter-BushCo… What is this man thinking?
Here’s what he’s thinking:
“It’s not a question of whether detainees are held at Guantanamo Bay or some other location. The question is how we should treat those who have been detained there. Whether we treat them according to the law or not does not depend on their address. It depends on our policy as a nation.
How should we treat them? This is not a new question. We are writing on a blank slate. We have entered into treaties over the years, saying this is how we will treat detainees. The United States has retified these treaties. They are the law of the land as much as any statute we passed. They have served our country well in past wars. We have held ourselves to be a civilized country, willing to play by the rules, even in time of war.
Unfortunately, without even consulting congress, the Bush administration unilaterally decided to set aside these treaties and create their own rules about the treatment of prisoners. Frankly, this congress has failed to hold the administration accountable for its failure to follow the law of the land when it comes to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and detainees.”
Setting aside the well-deserved barbs at BushCo. What the Senator has realized is that the detainees at Gitmo are – sit down for this – PEOPLE! They’re the same as we are, human beings, and as such they deserve to betreated in as humane manner as possible. The United States has laws about this kind of thing; George Bush doesn’t abide by them. Alberto Gonzales, in his role as White House chief counsel, advised to ignore the laws of the Geneva Convention, against protest from Colin Powell as Secretary of State. In the Bush White House a mere aid can override a Cabinet-level opinion. But wait: It gets better:
“After the President decided to ignore Geneva Conventions, the administration unilaterally created a new detention policy. They claim the fight to seize anyone, including even American citizens, anywhere in the world, including the United States, and hold them until the end of the war on terrorism, whenever that might be…
…They claim a person detained in the war on terrorism has no legal rights – no right to a lawyer, no right to see the evidence against them, no right to challenge their detention. In fact, the government has claimed detainees have no right to challenge their detention, even if they claim they were being tortured or executed.
This violates the Geneva Conventions, which protect everyone captured during wartime.”
Apparently, rules are for wimps. As an aside, I see many people who think that way as I commute to work and back. Laws that are in place for the safety of our roadways are flaunted, and outwardly violated because – after all – “the rules don’t apply to me.” Hmm… They must be republicans, too.
Back to the article: Senator Durban quotes Colin Powell, consummate soldier that he is, by mentioning something that the MSM sill probably never print:
“Remember what Secretary of State Colin Powell said? It is not a matter of following the law because we said we would, it is a matter of how our troops will be treated in the future. That is something overlooked here. If we want standards of civilized conduct to be applied to Americans captured in a warlike situation, we have to extend the same manner and type of treatment to those whom we detain, our prisoners.
Secretary Rumsfeld approved numerous abusive interrogation tactics against prisoners in Guantanamo. The Red Cross concluded that the use of those methods was “a form of torture.”
The United States, which each year issued a human rights report, holding the world accountable for outrageous conduct, is engaged in the same outrageous conduct when it comes to these prisoners.”
That pretty much sums up Senator Durbin’s thinking: Once again, the Bush administration is taking a hypocritical stance. A stance that the whole world sees as clearly as Dick Durbin, one which places the future of our brave soldiers at further risk due to flaunting the Geneva Conventions.
But none of the above is what the warblogging community is attacking. That is because they can’t. All of the senator’s points are valid, and painfully obvious. No, what they try to bring him down with is historical comparisons. Perhaps his comparisons were a bit awkward, but taken in its entirety, the meaning is clear. And that meaning is not what some would like us to believe.
“When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here – I almost hesitate to put them in record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let my read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report.
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. … On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
If I read this to you and did not tell you that is was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done my Nazis, soviets, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, this is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
There is it: three sentences out of eight paged of total text. This short paragraph is structured in such a way that the right cannot quote it directly without deflating their very objections. Our administration is comprised of war criminals, and by everything that makes us Americans, must be held accountable. BushCo spits at established international accords. BushCo spits at averything they don’t like, don’t want to do, and at anyone who dares to disagree. I close with Senator Durbin’s closing sentence:
“To criticize the rest of the world for using torture and to turn a blind eye to what we are doing in this war is wrong, and it is not American.”
Thank you, Senator. Well done.
Postscript: Redwood Dragon has an interesting take on this.
Ah, Aid to Africa, and not a moment too soon. Rather, it is uncountable moments too late for millions of people. Our favorite Shrubbery met with the leaders of five African nations and told them just what he thinks they want to hear. What I hear is more lies. And somewhere in my head I also hear Bush Senior saying, “Read my lips…”
We haven’t the money to be pledging to Africa. To do so honestly we would have to divert some fund from Iraq. How likely it that? No one can honestly say Europe’s southern neighbor doesn’t need the money. No one can honestly say the money, if we had it, would be used wisely.
I say – as wacky as it sounds – give the people the Internet, and let them form their own societies within the emerging global democracy that is cyberspace. Then they can connect with people like Bono and Bob Geldof, who could steer even more money their way, and release them from their bondage to western governments and financial institutions. Who says slavery is dead?
To hear our feckless leader vow aid to Africa is like hearing his pledge a Texas Ranger hats (and I don’t mean baseball) to everyone on the planet. Both are equally likely: don’t hold your breath.
In our world of Dogma and heresay, it is good to remember that humanity has always struggled against these issues. Good, because our current world problems are not unique to our times. Good because there is a way out, as enumerated by a very wise man over 2500 years ago:
Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.- The Buddha
Good because the way out is simple - if not easy. Think about it.
While perusing the emails I get from After Downing Street, I find a neat audio clip here. While listening, I get a sense of what people must have felt during the Sixties and Seventies. Those were turbulent time, a dark smudge on American history and politics, and people were frightened.
With all the media coverage of the recently uncovered Watergate mole, I find and interesting juxtaposition of two Republican administrations, that of Richard Nixon and this of George W. Bush. These, too, are dark, frightful times.
I’m sure that future historians, and those with us today, can draw many parallels between the two administrations. I can recall a vague sense of the pervasive emotional state of the adults around me, as I was too young to care overmuch. Then the counter-establishment argument was that politicians couldn’t be trusted; today we know our president, and his cadre of miscreants, lied repeatedly regarding Iraq’s capacity to inflict global harm via Weapons of Mass Destruction. Evidence is mounting supporting this. During the course of the last election cycle, this evidence was somehow swept under the proverbial rug, but now the dirt’s so voluminous the rug can’t hide it anymore.
During the Vietnam/Watergate era, I remember regular air raid drills during school. The American people were afraid enough to have their kids prostrate themselves in a vain and foolish pretence of safe conduct. Everyone knew this would save no one were the “big One” dropped on us. Today, the “Nukuler” threat is greater; more countries have weapons these days. Many of these Atomic Nations are quite nervous about perceived American Empirical motivations within our administration. We aren’t the only nation that has the capacity for pre-emption.
Watergate taught Americans all presidents are suspect. Richard Nixon’s admonitions on crookedness did nothing to stop his downfall. Today, we still feel the ghost of Watergate in our inability to trust our officials at any level. BushCo is worsening our distrust. It will take many good, hardworking presidents to overcome the specter of WMD. To rebuild America’s stature in the world will take generations. To reconstruct our core ideals and lay them in the forefront of our policies will take decades. To repair the damaged lived of the thousands of people affected by our foreign policies is impossible.
It is much simpler to tear down and destroy than to build up and create. The political monolith that is America took centuries of hard work and thousands of brave lives to create. In many ways this imperfect shell of a socio-political ideal is unfinished, roughed-in, very much a work in progress. The whole construct is still fragile; we must take care to hire the best artisans for the building. One mistake, and the whole edifice may crumble. In light of this, perhaps there’s a greater, far older historical ghost we need to fear: Rome.
Blogthings: at it again!
| Your IQ Is 130 |
 Your Logical Intelligence is Exceptional Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional |
From Washington Post
Ellen Saracini lost her husband, United Airlines Capt. Victor J. Saracini, when his Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Now she stands to lose more than half of her widow’s pension in a very different kind of crash — United’s default of its $9 billion pension obligations.
The scale of the default, the largest in U.S. history, has received more attention than the toll on the lives of the bankrupt airline’s 120,000 employees and pensioners. Saracini discussed its impact on her and her two daughters in an interview yesterday, saying she hopes her story will help shift the focus to the laws and policies that allow such defaults.
“My own situation is not a crisis — I have my husband’s life insurance to keep us secure in our house,” she said from her home in Yardley, Pa. “But a lot of other people have real hardship — medical costs they won’t be able to afford, houses they won’t be able to keep. If I can help draw attention to them, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.”
Let’s all applaud Ellen. Someone who doesn’t thinks only of herself! I congratulate her, and I bet her kids are nice people, too. We need more people out there whom, when times get tough, refuse to shrivel up and whine. Always are there people who are worse off. Always these people need care and attention. Ellen will “get by” because of her outlook, and the friends she makes by helping publicize this disaster.
Saracini was among about 2,000 United pensioners and employees who e-mailed their stories to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) in recent days for what he called an online hearing on the human impact of the default. “We have been overwhelmed — both numerically and emotionally — by the response,” said Miller, one of several politicians in both parties warning that a wider crisis will loom if the nation’s pension security laws are not revised.
More than 20 other companies have defaulted on pension funds of more than $100 million in the past three years, and last week, executives of troubled Delta and Northwest airlines said they may be next. Miller has proposed a six-month moratorium on defaults, as Congress debates how to fix what many lawmakers call “broken” pension protection laws.
“Like Enron, workers’ lives and retirements have been ruined,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said last week. “But unfortunately, this time it’s perfectly legal.”
Don’t wash your hands of it just yet, Senator. Did you or did you not vote for all the corporate pork tax cuts of recent years? Show us the ink on your hands.
In e-mails to Miller that his staff is posting online, and in interviews, United retirees recounted stories of job-hunting in their sixties and seventies, facing medical costs they no longer can afford, uprooting families to move to lower-cost communities, selling dream retirement homes and losing money they had counted on to support elderly parents.
The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC), the federal insurance program that faces its own solvency crisis and is to take over the United pensions, ensures a maximum of $45,000 a year in benefits for those who retired at 65, but considerably less for those who retired younger — much as Social Security pays less to early retirees. This particularly hurts pilots, whom the law requires to retire from major airlines at 60 and who now collect as much as $125,000 a year in pensions, depending on length of service. The PBGC’s maximum coverage for those who retire at 60 is $28,000 — a cut of 50 to 75 percent for pilots. Saracini will receive even less because her husband was 51 when he was killed.
That’s a beautiful thing.
My right-minded friends are going to holler for my saying this, but haven’t we seen several corporate taxes cut recently? Haven’t we just seen a law passed that makes it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy? I am aware that many citizens took advantage of the system, many who might otherwise have been able to work things out on their own. Here we have a global corporate entity bailing out on its commitments, and a republican Senator says, effectively, “Shucks, them’s the breaks.”
Not only that, we have a small epidemic on our hands. Especially when we stop to consider all the people screwed around when companies go “Enron.”
United might or might not be able to fix things, I don’t know. The real slap in the face of Americans, as John Clark pointed out, is the government agency BPGC, whose only function is to act as a safety net in these supposedly rare instances, which is out of funds because the whole government is living out of Asia’s pockets! But that’s not the official take, this is:
PBGC Executive Director Bradley D. Belt said in an interview that United is only the latest — and largest — illustration of what ails the federal pension protection system: It allows companies to drastically underfund pensions, and even to disguise the problem. Defaults have so escalated in troubled sectors of the economy, Belt said, that the PBGC now is on the hook for $450 billion in pension obligations, compared with $50 billion only three or four years ago. In three years, it has gone from having a $7 billion surplus to a $23 billion deficit. Without changes to the 30-year-old pension protection system, he said, the PBGC could itself become insolvent.
As such, Belt said he sees a grim upside to the tide of financial problems United retirees are now bringing to the public’s attention.
“If there’s a silver lining on that very dark cloud, it’s a wake-up call to policymakers that this problem has a very human dimension and very human costs, and it’s critically important to change the rules so we don’t have future Uniteds,” Belt said.
If there is a silver lining, it’s in another’s pocket.
To paraphrase John D. Clark, the company defaults its employees on benefits, the congress defaults it obligation to its constituents, the president defaults on the nations assets, and past presidents somehow are at fault for thinking government is “by the people, for the people.”